ABSTRACT
The social source of definitions favorable to sexual aggression may be immediate and more distant reference groups, or the more general attitudes voiced by men toward sex and women that justify various forms of sexual aggression, including rape. A very large portion of the individual differences in rape in the university sample of men is left unaccounted for by the empirical indicators of the social learning constructs. The social learning model does an even better job of accounting for rape proclivity, explaining 54" of the variance in the self-reported probability of committing rape or using physical force in sex. The amounts of variance accounted for by the social learning models are impressive, especially the explained variance of more than 50" in rape proclivity. Empirical models of nonphysical and physical sexual coercion and proclivity for physically forced sex derived from social learning theory are clearly superior to those derived from social control and relative deprivation theories.
